BuzzSumo Glossary of Terms

Definitions of key terms used in BuzzSumo and in broader content marketing efforts.

Written by Eric deLima Rubb Updated over a week ago

Average retweets

The number of retweets a Twitter user gets, on average, when posting a tweet. This is a strong indicator of how engaged an audience is with a potential influencer. The higher, the better.

Backlink

A backlink, also called an "inbound link" or "incoming link" is created when one website links to another. The link between the two websites is the backlink. (source: Moz) Backlinks are one of the key factors search engines like Google look for when deciding where to rank or place your content in search results. Both the number and quality of the backlinks that point to your site are important. Quality is determined by the relevance and strength of the pages that link to your site. Find the backlinks to any domain with BuzzSumo.

Canonical URL

A canonical URL is often called the "preferred" version of a webpage. It tells search engines which is the correct page to index (and ultimately rank) in results. Using canonical URLs can prevent issues such as the indexing of duplicate content. Errors in canonical URLS can not only harm your search rankings but also result in inaccurate reporting of your share counts (shares spread across multiple versions of what is essentially the same content).

Content competitor

A website that produces and/or provides content about your key topic areas. These sites may or may not be direct product competitors but they are definitely competing for the attention of your audience.

Content intelligence

Content intelligence represents the systems and software that transform content data and business data into actionable insights for content strategy and tactics with impact (source: American Marketing Association).

Content shock

Content shock can be used broadly to discuss the content marketing industry as a whole or applied to a particular industry's content (source: Mark Schaefer). It was originally coined by Mark Schaefer to describe rising volumes of content paired with limited human attention. To determine if content shock is affecting you, consider how much content is available for your topic areas and note whether average shares are increasing or decreasing. Use Content Analysis trend charts to compare topics.

Content topic

A broad topic that you write about on your blog or website. Content topics are less specific than long-tail keywords. Content topics are frequently aligned with the questions that your audience might ask if they were looking for your product or service.

Domain Authority

Domain Authority (DA) is a ranking score developed by Moz. It predicts how well awebsite will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). Scores range from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to rank. (source: Moz)

Evergreen content

A type of content that consistently drives traffic, shares and links to your site over an extended period of time. Evergreen content is shown to provide value to audiences over the long term, beyond the typical rise and fall of engagement around articles.

Evergreen score

A ranking score developed by BuzzSumo. It measures the number of social shares and backlinks an article receives more than one month after it is published. The higher the engagements after the initial 30-day period after publication, the higher the Evergreen Score.

Instagram authority score

A ranking score developed by BuzzSumo. It measures the level of engagement an Instagram page drives on its posts, relative to other Instagram pages. Scores range from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to higher social engagement.

Long-tail keyword

Long-tail keywords (sometimes referred to as "keyword phrases") are groupings of three and four words which are very, very specific to whatever you are selling or for targeting niche audiences (source: Wordtracker). For example, "big data healthcare analytics" is a long-tail keyword. "Big data" is not. When using BuzzSumo to find content, long-tail keywords can sometimes be too specific to produce many results. Try searching for content topics instead and narrow your searches after if necessary.

Page Authority

Page Authority (PA) is a ranking score developed by Moz. It predicts how well aspecific page will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). Scores range from 1 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability for the page to rank. (source: Moz)

Reply Ratio

The percentage of tweets a Twitter user posts that are in direct response to other Twitter users. Good for measuring whether a potential influencer is regularly involved in conversation with his or her followers.

Retweet Ratio

The percentage of tweets a Twitter user posts that are retweets of other posts. Good for measuring whether a potential influencer regularly shares the content of other Twitter users.

Trending Score

A ranking score developed by BuzzSumo that measures the speed of social shares within a 24 hour period. Scores do not have a limit - the more shares an article gets within short bursts of time, the higher the score can climb. Use to determine which articles are driving conversations on social or about to go viral.